USA: Hop Industry Economic Viability Initiative from Washington Hop Commission

China has come on strong and is now the world's third-largest hop producer with a 20 % market share of the dominant variety. Germany leads with 32 % followed by the United States at 30 %.

The roughly 48 hop growers in the Yakima Valley -- down from 264 in the 1960s -- survive because they've diversified into tree fruit or other crops, but they say time is running out.

"If we're going to keep our hop growers in the game, we've got to achieve major reductions in the cost of production," Ann George, administrator of the Washington Hop Commission, said.

To keep growers competitive, the Hop Commission is spearheading the "Hop Industry Economic Viability Initiative," which is entering its second phase with a $1.5 million appropriation from the 2005 Legislature. The program started last year with a $400,000 investment on labor-saving and other technologies.

Growth in the state minimum wage and increases in workers' compensation and unemployment taxes have combined to add $40,000 in costs per year to the average grower, who is already losing $300 to $400 an acre, according to the Washington Hop Commission.

Sometimes they call it "the blue machine," and other times it's the machine that grower Don Desmarais built 15 years ago in Mabton. Technically, it's a low-trellis hop picker. The folks at Green Acre Farms near Harrah rebuilt the picker last year, gave it a test run and pronounced it a success. "It takes two guys to run the machine and they replaced 15," said Kevin Boyle, controller at Green Acres.

The picker will get more work this year on Mike Roy's experiment with low-trellis hop growing at Roy Farms. Here's the idea: Traditionally grown hops are trained up strands of twine rigged across an 18-foot-high trellis system and then hand-tied at the top to a series of overhead cross wires. Come harvest, the hop-bearing vines are cut and hauled to picking and cleaning machines. It makes for a multiple hands-on process before the fruits of the labor, the hops, not the stems or leaves, are finally harvested.

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .